Bavaria is the most German part of Germany; here all the ‘Youth’ movements originated, the country being especially suited to walking-tours. And it is here, more than in Prussia, that the survival of militarism is to be feared. The Crown Prince Rupprecht is still the most powerful man in the province. Monarchism will always evoke sympathy. But an independent Bavaria in her present frame of mind would not conduce to the peace of Europe.
Eventually, after taking a wrong turning out of Ansbach and being compelled to enquire the way of one of the witches of the field, we arrived at Rothenburg about four o’clock. This town surpasses belief. It is as though all the goblin haunts, palaces and fortress towers of fairyland were writhing in an elongated distortion glass; and yet, unlike those of Nuremberg, they ring true. There is a subtle distinction between the two towns. Both are visited by tourists, but Rothenberg by Germans only. Whereas Nuremberg is a conglomeration of all dates and styles, Rothenburg was built in the later Middle Ages and not a stone has been added or subtracted since. Her buildings are the more preposterous, but they do not suffer from that clustering ornamentation reminiscent of Burmese temples, with which the gables of Nuremberg are loaded. Rothenburg is a complete walled ‘burg’ of the Middle Ages. The walls have remained intact; at them, therefore, the town ends. In the fields beyond struggle one or two pink villas; that is all.
Entrance is effected through a series of gatehouses that are in themselves scarcely credible. From a central archway radiate two arc-shaped walls ending in a couple of round flanking turrets, with high-pitched, conical roofs. Over the actual gateway rises a tower, square in shape, and over sixty feet in height, up which runs a succession of little windows; while at the top, under the projecting eaves of a twisted and pagoda-like tiled roof, is a tiny house, having a row of these windows back and front, each embowered with a window-box. From one depends a string, on the end of which is a basket in which to haul up food. Here, surely, is a domicile reached only on a broomstick. In reality it is probably the dwelling of a neatly-dressed jeweller’s assistant, newly married, who, owing to the housing shortage, is obliged to live either with his mother-in-law, or up 130 stairs.
The streets of the town shelve and twist like mountain paths. The roofs of the houses reach as high and half as high again as the walls on which they rest. Every window has its window-box, filled with geraniums, lobelia, and marguerites. At the end of the town furthest from the gate by which we entered, runs a street of magnificent old stone houses, into the front walls of which have been built, haphazard, the painted escutcheons of their former owners. One of these was erected by the Emperor Henry IV.
Groups of Wandervögel, with their bare necks and knees, were to be seen at every corner, making sketches. While David and Simon sat in a café, I also attempted, very unsuccessfully, to draw the town hall. Such, however, was the smell of the crowds of Wandervögel who insisted on looking over my shoulder, that I was eventually thankful to see Diana driving down the street to take me away.
Of all the fantastic, outlandish forms of medieval artistic expression that have come down to us, the Bavarian style of architecture is the most eccentric. That a perfect example of a complete town of the period should have survived in its entirety, unaltered, undemolished and unextended, in the heart of the country over which the Reformation and the counter-Reformation carried fire and sword, and the Thirty Years War cannibalism and polygamy, is one of the miracles of history. Considering her absence of natural defences and the vicissitudes that she has endured, the phenomenon of Rothenburg’s conservation is without parallel in Europe.
WHEN WE LEFT ENGLAND, the fashionable intelligentsia were all preparing their descent on Salzburg to attend the Mozart Festival, the production of which had been entrusted to M. Reinhardt. Either for the sake of their musical education, or simply for the purpose of meeting various friends, David and Simon had also decided to honour this feast in the musical calendar with their presence. In any case we left Nuremberg at half-past ten on Saturday morning for Austria.
David had arranged to lunch with a Hungarian baron, who, despite the fact that he himself possesses large estates in his own country and his wife in hers, which is Roumania, was spending the summer in Munich.
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